In this episode of The Continuing Educator, our hosts talk about how to establish a real rapport with your students and build a classroom culture where they can trust and thrive. The first step? Ask your kids how they want the class to work for them, and be honest about what you expect in return. Kids can smell inauthenticity. Plus: Tips for when to step in to kids’ conflicts with each other, the utility of unicorns and mermaids, and a google-form for hair-adjacent encouragement.

In this episode of The Continuing Educator, we talk to a working educator about the importance of family literacy and strategies for increasing it. Our guest Martin Silverman is the principal at Salinas Elementary School in Universal City, TX, and has worked as a teacher in both urban and rural schools. From his own experiences growing up, he saw the importance of literacy as a focus in families and has sought to revitalize that practice in the families of his students.

What are digital and disciplinary literacy, and why are they so important right now? We dive into these questions with Laura B. Hansen, director of Teaching and Learning Connections at NWEA.

The essence of family literacy is that parents are supported as the first teachers of their children.” Family Literacy is the idea that long after diapers and baby steps, our children have so much to learn by watching, observing, and collaborating with trusted adults at home, particularly when it comes to building a strong foundation for reading with confidence. On this episode, we dive deeper into this idea and share the how and why of building and sustain robust family literacy practices.

Educators are confronted by many common misconceptions about dyslexia, which can negatively impact how students progress in literacy. This webinar will help you make research-based decisions to support young readers, as well as share an overview of MAP Reading Fluency.

Let’s take a trip to where it all begins, at least academically, with early literacy and numeracy. On this episode, early learning experts Cindy Jiban and Tammy Baumann join us to share classroom strategies to help young learners navigate this important season of life. The discussion touches on the science of reading, why early numeracy sometimes takes a backseat to early literacy, and how teachers early in their career can hit the ground running in these areas.

“For many, learning mathematics leads to perceiving the subject as a collection of procedures that are disconnected from any big picture. It’s much like filling a box with puzzle pieces, yet never building the puzzle.”

For this episode, we are joined by Dr. Ted Coe and Anita Brown of NWEA to discuss how educators move beyond doing math to thinking about mathematical concepts, with a focus on formative conversation starters.